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from page 1) Carbonite's Recommended Backup Options
What, exactly, does Carbonite back up?Carbonite offers two initial backup selection options when you first install the program. Here are the selections, and what they mean: a) "Backup My Documents & Desktop" - RECOMMENDED This option selects the data files located in C:\Documents and Settings (or C:\Users on Windows Vista). This includes the files in your "My Documents" folder, the files on your desktop, the files in your "My Pictures" folder (as well as "My Music" for paid subscriptions), and various other document folders if your installed programs choose to store their data in this area. (Most e-mail applications, including Outlook and Outlook Express, as well as most newer financial software and various other programs use the "Documents and Settings" area as a repository for their data.) For most Carbonite users, this option is ideal and backs up their important data files and documents. (Normal upload speeds average between 2 and 3 GB per day.) b) "I’ll manually select what to backup later." This option does not select any files at all, and allows you complete control over what is and what is not backed up. Right-click any file or folder and select "Back this up" from the Carbonite context menu to select the item for backup. If you wish to switch to the "recommended" option of backing up your documents and desktop, right-click the C:\Documents and Settings folder (C:\Users on Windows Vista) and select "Back this up" from the Carbonite context menu. Sometimes users store their documents under the default account. There are also setting files that are backed up. By choosing the recommended backup you are sure to include all files that are important if you had a crash or needed to reformat. What Carbonite Does NOT Back Up (and Why)By default, Carbonite backs up your documents, but does not back up application files, operating system files, and temporary files. While this does mean that in the event of a catastrophic failure you would need to first reinstall your operating systems and programs, and then restore your documents through the Carbonite backup, this has certain key benefits to you. a) Carbonite backup and restore operations take place over the Internet. The more files you need to back up or restore, the longer it takes to do so. Installing your operating systems and program files from their original disks will make your restore operation take a fraction of the time it would if you restored your entire system. b) In many cases, a "catastrophic failure" results in the replacement of the entire computer. The new computer will likely have many different components than the original computer, such as different display and sound cards and network adapters. If you restored your original system on the new computer, you would be restoring the old configuration, and many devices would not work properly. c) If your system failure was the result of a virus infection, it may have been dormant on your system for some time, and restoring your system exactly as it had been before the crash could preserve the same vulnerability and result in yet another crash. Viruses primarily affect program and system files, and only affect document files in rare cases. By turning off macro support in your office productivity software, you could be fairly confident that restoring your documents will not result in another infection, whereas you would have less assurance of security if you restored your program files as well. All that being said, some folks still do prefer the option of a full system backup. The easiest way to do this is to use a third-party disk imaging application. A disk imaging application creates a snapshot "image" of your system and stores it as a file or files on your hard drive. You could then select the image files to be included in your Carbonite backup. In the event of a catastrophic system failure, you would still need to reinstall your operating system and Carbonite, as well as the disk imaging software. You could then restore the disk image files from your Carbonite backup, and use the disk imaging software with those files to return your system to its previous state. Deleted Files If you delete a file on your computer, Carbonite notes the deletion and marks the file for removal thirty days later. This is a great bonus, because if you accidentally delete a file and realize it within 30 days, you can just access the control panel to restore it without having to actually download it.
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